DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the official marker at White Point has to say — and I'll do my best to do it justice. It was a Saturday. September 13th, 1919.
The last swarms of vacationers were packed onto the Corpus Christi beaches, soaking up the final weekend of summer like they had all the time in the world. There was a warning. A massive hurricane had been gathering strength out in the Gulf for two weeks — two weeks — and now it was heading for shore.
Most folks heard that warning and set it aside. Last weekend of the season, after all. What's the rush?
By Sunday afternoon, they found out. Winds up to 110 miles per hour hit the buildings on North Beach. Storm tides rose up to 16 feet.
The structures that had been full of laughter and sunburned families began to break up. Not bend — break up. And by Monday morning, bodies and debris had begun to wash up on the shore at White Point.
Black oil from the storage tanks near Port Aransas covered everything. The beach, the wreckage, the dead — all of it, coated in black. Over the next few days, more than 200 people worked to rescue survivors and retrieve the dead.
The remains were brought to the West Portland schoolhouse, right here on this site. And then came the task that may have been harder than the storm itself — identifying who had perished. The bodies were broken.
They were covered in oil. And in some cases, whole families had perished together, leaving no one behind who could say a name. So they did what they could.
The remains were weighed on a cotton scale. Then they were carried almost a mile back toward the beach where they had been found, and laid to rest in mass graves dug with a slip scraper. More than 30 separate graves were dug, stretching from Indian Point near Portland all the way to a spot about 20 miles up Nueces Bay.
Some of the larger graves measured 1,400 feet wide and 3,200 feet long. Let that settle in for a moment. About a month later, evidence indicates all the bodies were moved — to Rose Hill Cemetery in Corpus Christi and to other sites.
The official death toll from the 1919 storm was 284. But estimates, counting those lost at sea, place the actual number at about 1,000 souls. Property damage ran to roughly 20 million dollars.
One thousand people ignored a warning, or maybe just trusted the sky one last time. And the Gulf, which had been building to this for two weeks, did not forgive the delay. This gravesite, and the others stretching along that bay, aren't just history.
They're a reminder — the marker says it plain — of the power of the elements. Some reminders get carved in stone. Some get carved into the land itself.
What the marker says
On Saturday, September 13, 1919, the last swarms of vacationers who packed the Corpus Christi beaches were warned that a massive hurricane, which had gathered strength in the Gulf for two weeks, was approaching the shore. Most ignored the warnings in favor of the last weekend of the summer season. By Sunday afternoon the buildings on North Beach, battered by winds up to 110 miles per hour and storm tides up to 16 feet, began to break up. By Monday morning, bodies and debris had begun to wash up on the shore at White Point. Black oil from the storage tanks near Port Aransas covered everything. Over the next few days, more than 200 people worked to rescue survivors and retrieve the dead. Bodies were taken to the West Portland schoolhouse on this site. Identifying the remains proved difficult; the bodies were broken, covered in oil, and in some cases whole families had perished, leaving no one to identify them. The remains were weighed on a cotton scale and taken almost a mile back toward the beach where they were found. They were laid to rest in a mass grave dug with a slip scraper. More than 30 separate graves were dug from Indian Point near Portland to a spot about 20 miles up Nueces Bay. Some of the larger graves measured 1400 feet wide and 3200 feet long. Evidence indicates that all the bodies were moved to Rose Hill Cemetery in Corpus Christi and to other sites about a month later. The official death toll was 284; estimates place the actual number, including those lost at sea, at about 1,000. Property damage from the 1919 storm was estimated at about 20 million dollars. This gravesite and the others serve as a reminder of the power of the elements. (2000)